


time waits for none

by messier31



Category: Babblebrook (Web Series)
Genre: Death, F/F, Gen, POV First Person, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messier31/pseuds/messier31
Summary: I cannot only remember the feel of death, like a cloud, a cloak, a haze- I can sense it, with me, always over my shoulder. Waiting, I know, to finally take me, though I have given it so much.





	time waits for none

**Author's Note:**

> a short musing on death with the nightshade witch.  
> immortality, it seems, is little but an eternal and long-wearing curse. 
> 
> written for and with Colby2315
> 
> "maybe persimmon will be our always"

I am old enough to have seen it all. Old enough to have seen the rise and fall of kings, of civilizations, of an entire people. I am so old that I have seen the birth and death of the stars themselves.

  
There comes a point when time starts to lose meaning. Like running your hand over a finely woven silk, you no longer feel the lone threads, simply the whole.  
Such as it is with me.

  
Eons of memory have become compressed, dusty- and I am so weary from carrying the burden of remembering on my shoulders that only fragments arise, pieces of a forgotten whole-  
A raven.  
The smell of blood.  
The haunting screams of the winds over the empty moors on cold nights.

  
I remember the beating of hearts- the dying heart of a mighty dragon, the poisoned heart of a false queen, the fluttering heart of a girl who was young no longer.

  
Yes, if there is one thing I can remember clearly, it is the feel of death, for there has been so much of it in my life.

  
I cannot only remember the feel of death, like a cloud, a cloak, a haze- I can sense it, with me, always over my shoulder. Waiting, I know, to finally take me, though I have given it so much. And while we wait together, waiting for death to finally catch me, I sit in the bloody light of a dying sun and grasp for the silvery wisps of a better time.

  
Like fish, the memories dart in and out of my consciousness: there one second, gone forever the next, leaving me wondering always what I will never know again. I try to remember her, her with her amber hair and laughing eyes and open heart, the girl who smelled of sunshine and the warm breeze. And my sister, once the only steady force in my life, the only thing I could count on, who turned to moonlight, sacrificing herself to protect me. The traveler, too: a companion, a friend, who showed up in my life unexpectedly and trusted me when few else would.

  
And while I wait, I remember warm candlelight, and I remember ink on parchment and the smell of baking bread. I remember daylilies and the crackle of a fire in autumn.

  
I force myself to remember the best moments of my life- the way the girl held my hand in the market, leading the way through the laughter and the people and the bustling stalls- the way my sister kissed my forehead and made me believe when she promised that it would be all okay, in the end- the way the traveller treated me as a friend when I so desperately needed one.

  
Yes, I remember death, I know death. But- somewhere in my fading memory- there are warm summer rains- and shy kisses- there are persimmons and crystals and flowers- and I can tell myself that maybe, maybe it wasn't all for naught.


End file.
